Course: Oblivion (episode)
With a new warp drive installed that will allow Voyager to return home much more quickly and the marriage of Tom and B'Elanna, everything seems to be coming up roses. But, when B'Elanna and the rest of the engineering crew begin to get sick and die, the crew discovers they are not what they appear to be. Summary In ''Voyager'''s mess hall, B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris are wed. Kathryn Janeway is the master of ceremonies and Chakotay is giving B'Elanna away. Underneath the celebration in the mess hall, however, the metallic structure of the decks begin to distort ominously and the thrown grains of rice began seeping through to the Jefferies tube underneath. As Torres prepares Seven of Nine to take care of Main Engineering while she is on her honeymoon, a strange reading is picked up in a Jefferies tube underneath engineering. It is losing molecular cohesion. The crew suspect that their new enhanced warp drive is causing subspace radiation. Torres suddenly becomes violently ill and is admitted to sickbay. She is dying from the radiation. Comforting his wife, Paris tells her about his plans for their honeymoon at the Graystone Hotel, but she dies moments later, despite all attempts of reviving her. After discovering that items brought on board in the past few months are not degrading with the rest of Voyager and her crew, Chakotay and Tuvok review past encounters with aliens, planets, etc. to see if there is anything that could be causing the degradation. They come upon the encounter of the biomimetic lifeforms on the Demon Class planet. ( ) In a test, Torres' corpse is injected with a dichromate catalyst. The results show that she was a biomimetic copy. In fact, every member of the crew and Voyager itself are biomimetic copies, and the warp drive radiation, though harmless to humanoids, is killing them. Janeway decides that despite their perilous state, their goal is still to return to Earth instead of going back to the Demon planet. Some, especially Paris, disagree with keeping to the original Voyager's mission, but the crew follows their captain's orders to locate the closest Class Y planet from their current position to make repairs before resuming their course to the Alpha Quadrant. A Class-Y planet is located, and upon arriving, Voyager commences landing procedures. A mining vessel, however, arrives and states that the planet resides under the Ord'mirit Mining Treaty and will destroy Voyager unless they leave. After Voyager's weapons prove ineffective, Tuvok suggests a way to destroy the mining vessel, but Janeway orders the landing canceled, reminding the crew they are still Starfleet officers. While expressing his concerns to Janeway of returning to their real home of the Demon planet, Chakotay dies, and Janeway decides then to follow her first officer's advice and turns the ship around, bringing back online the hazardous new warp drive. Over time, many of the Voyager crew continue to die as the ship suffers further degradation. Janeway orders the creation of a time capsule out of non-biomimetic materials to preserve the memory of the duplicate Voyager crew and what they have discovered on their journey. After the main deflector fails, space dust begins to impact the hull. Harry Kim reinitializes the deflector in time to preserve the warp field, but as Neelix begins calls for celebration, the bridge crew discover that Janeway has died. Continuing on, Kim takes command of Voyager, assisted by Seven. The degradation has become so severe that life support begins to fail with only ten hours left of air. Kim orders the time capsule launched, but the degraded launcher fails, destroying the capsule. Suddenly, a vessel is detected; it is the real Voyager. Kim attempts to hail them, but communications are out. They must drop to impulse to contact them, but the warp drive does not respond to controls. Kim orders the core ejected, causing Voyager to spin out of control. Meanwhile, the original Voyager has detected the distress signal and is proceeding to its location. Upon arrival, the crew finds only formless debris. With no traces upon which to make further investigations, Janeway makes a note of the encounter in the ship's log, and the crew continue on their way home. Log Entries *''Captain's log, stardate 52586.3. We've had a lot to celebrate lately - Tom and B'Elanna's wedding, Ensign Harper's new baby, and the continued health of our enhanced warp drive, which has taken us within striking distance of home. '' *''Computer, begin chief engineer's log, supplemental. I've spent the last four hours analyzing the warp field schematics. But I'm still no closer to finding out what's going wrong. '' *''Captain's log, supplemental. We've lost 63 crewmen and our systems are continuing to fail. Though we're still five weeks away from the demon planet, we haven't given up hope. '' * (Log entry made by Harry Kim) Acting Captain's log, stardate 52597.4. Our situation's getting worse every day. More than 80% of the ship is uninhabitable. Most of the crew are gone. It seems less and less likely that the few of us left will reach our destination. '' Memorable Quotes "''Given the volatile nature of their relationship, one might have predicted homicide rather than matrimony." : - Seven of Nine, on Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres "B'Elanna has asked me to forgo the rigors of Klingon painstiks in favor of a more traditional ceremony." "They're saving the painstiks for the honeymoon.'" : - '''Captain Janeway' and Harry Kim "Congratulations." "For what?" "You may not want to know." : - The Doctor, Seven of Nine, and Tuvok, after Seven catches B'Elanna Torres' bouquet Background Information * How many, if any, of the episodes between and "Course: Oblivion" took place on the mimetic Voyager is unknown. While Tuvok and Chakotay were rehashing past events to determine the cause of their ship's degradation, the only event mentioned that was featured in an earlier episode was their visit to the Demon-class planet. Furthermore, no mention of an enhanced warp drive was ever made before "Course: Oblivion", and the mimetic Tom Paris still held the rank of lieutenant junior grade while the original Tom Paris (seen at the end of this episode) had been demoted to the rank of ensign in . * At some point between and this episode the mimetic beings were able to adapt to a different atmosphere than the one found on a Class Y planet. While in Demon they suffocated in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, in this episode it is said that Neelix harvested vegetables on another planet. * Preparing to land Voyager, the mimetic Janeway orders red alert instead of the condition blue established in previous landings. * This episode is what is often called a "bottle show". * A microphone production error occurs in this episode. When the mimetic Tom Paris enters Sickbay to check on B'Elanna's condition, a production crew member's voice can be heard indistinctly in the backround, off-set. * A continuity error occurs when the mimetic Chakotay arrives in Janeway's quarters for their weekly dinner. She announces that they will be eating "chicken paprakash" (a favourite recipe of her grandmother). Janeway appears to have forgotten that Chakotay is a well-documented vegetarian (as per season 3's ). Given that they are both mimetic copies, it is reasonable to suggest that Chakotay's dietary choices would have been copied also. * This episode features the fourth time Voyager is completely destroyed. Video and DVD releases * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 5.9, . * As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection. Links and References Guest Stars * David Keith Anderson as Crew Member (uncredited) References aphrodisiac; Ahmedeen; antineutron; argon; Ashmore; biomimetic lifeform; biomolecular enhancer; bouquet; champagne; Chicago; chicken paprikash; class Y planet; comet; cortical stimulator; Cytrax; Cytraxian cricket; deuterium; deuterium manifold; dichromate; dilithium matrix; direct neural resequencing; enhanced warp drive; exhaust manifold; Graystone Hotel; Harper; Hazari ale; hydrogen sulfate; injector port; iso-synaptic pulse; isolitic converter; Kmada; launch sequencer; message buoy; micron; Milky Way Galaxy; mimetic lifeform; N'Kree; nanoprobe; Ord'mirit Mining Treaty; particle accelerator; Podaris sector; polaron; reaction chamber; rice; silicate; Silver Blood; subspace radiation; subspace transceiver; theta radiation; trilithium; [[USS Voyager (mimetic)|USS Voyager (mimetic)]]; Vaskan sector; warp core ejection system; warp field; wind surfing |next= }} Category:VOY episodes de:Endstation - Vergessenheit es:Course: Oblivion fr:Course: Oblivion nl:Course: Oblivion